Traditional inkjet printing mechanisms use cartridges, often called “pens,” which eject drops of liquid colorant, referred to generally herein as “ink,” onto a print receiving medium. Each pen has a printhead formed with one or more very small nozzles through which the ink drops are fired. To print a desired image or letters on a print media, nozzles of the inkjet printer eject tiny droplets of ink, or dots, during each horizontal pass of the printhead over the print media, thereby forming a row of dots. Each horizontal pass of a printhead over a print media is called a swath. After each preceding swath, the print media is incrementally advanced. Through a succession of swaths, desired images or letters are printed onto the print media.
Often, printer components such as the moveable carriage, servo mechanisms, and controllable rollers become ineffective due to wear, thereby reducing the durability of traditional inkjet printing mechanisms. Additionally, the inclusion of automation components, feed components, and servicing hardware greatly increase the overall cost of producing the traditional inkjet printing mechanisms.
Moreover, initial setup in traditional printers includes performing a number of lengthy steps. Traditional printers are communicatively coupled to an associated computing device through a serial or a parallel port, often requiring the computing device to be shut down in preparation of connection and recognition. Additionally, initial set up of traditional printers includes the manual loading of associated software. During operation of traditional inkjet printers, printing is often delayed by the opening of a text or graphics supporting application, initiation of the print job, answering the call to select the desired printer from one of any number of available printers, formatting the print job for print quality, paper type and enlargement/reduction of the image, the transmission of the entire print job to the desired printer, saving or the deletion of text after the transmission of a print job, and the closing of the software associated with the print job.
Additionally, when printing a small message or reminder using a traditional inkjet printer, a large amount of paper and other resources are often wasted. In order to print a small message, an entire sheet of paper was traditionally run through the printing device. If the printed message was cut off of the sheet of paper, the reduced paper could not be re-used and was wasted. Moreover, a large number of traditional printing devices would not accept small or odd shaped print mediums for printing, thereby necessitating the use of an entire sheet of paper for each print job.